Notes:

Chris called frustrated about some inner office politics (nothing overly new) – but as it related to Wes / Doug and their frustrations being expressed to Chris on some of the team projects and work. He asked me not to discuss with Nic, but I am putting it in my report. So Nic please don't dip into this just be aware there is a little discontent, which isn't abnormal. I recommended to Chris to challenge them to write down their concerns, constructively, and where they want to see things to go, and what roles they play in that, and their own growth. They shouldn't share this with anyone immediately, let it sit, and add to and constructively review it until they feel it is truly constructive and not entirely self-serving.

I told him I would follow up when I return from my trip.

Action Items:

-Follow up with Chris on Pro Services tech's descent.

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Spent a few minutes reviewing that meetings were getting set for next two weeks, meeting agendas, and outcomes desired.

Action Items:

-Follow up when I return

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Downloaded and organized Youtube videos & shorts for use on social media, and web. This was requested by the Opollo marketing team as they did not have access to the Shartega IT Youtube channel.

Action Items:

None

Completed by: Jordan Patterson

Notes:

Mark reached out to Ettleson & Dolan asking for Meetings. Neither has responded. He threw Thursday the 17th out there for Ettleson – Doug is open for that day.

Audi – Kaseya quote manager email sending was broken yesterday – the proposal is now built and ready to send to customer.

Rifast – Wanson – Refast has their own email security compliance – he is sorting through that. Wanson has been distracted more with Autotask stuff. Progress needs to be mutually agreed up on for security awareness kick off. I suggested we try to get them finished onboarding by end of month. Challenged Mark to Challenge Wanson to complete by end of month.

Challenges: Dan Wolf

Documenting who is and isn't getting monitors (1/2/0) – some have real nice monitors already. Looks like there will be extra monitors.

Lexus Printer move. Chris put in a ticket for and now taking caring of. Approach could have been handled better. Assumption the pro-services team knew to get it moved – not in the ticket – Wes would have moved it if he had known – it is on wheels – not a big deal. Two people were onsite yesterday at lexus could have just been done by Chris & Nathan. Scheduled for monday to be resolved. Little bit of a hurt feelings on this, but its ok. Thick skin. Nathan and Chris could have moved it. Could have just been rolled it in there. Nathan could have moved it, worked with the support team, to make sure it prints. Customer experience, and teamwork – now we have to pull Wes from something else and physically send him there to do something Nathan probably could have done in a few minutes while onsite and documented in a ticket. That said it was not documented anywhere to do this.

The Exchange – Sam has 5 PCs left. – APs that Zack context switched with is still not done – and needs order number and licensing portal info.

Autobarn LTD – this needs to be done in proper stages – if this is done out of order – its going to slow down the overall roll out of the project. But the sales manager – vida – is very vocal. Need to setup expectations – it would be best that when we move their PCs over – we add them to M365 at that time. Customer experience on this is an issue. My advice is to have a positive – we want to make you happy – but we need you to understand the position we are in now with timing and other projects – etc.

Action Items:

-Autobarn PC snafu with Dennis & Refresh project

-Followup with Mark to see if he got Ettleson's project planning sessions scheduled and how the session went

-Follow up on Rifast getting done by end of month

-Follow up on Audi UPS proposals – did this get out and approved – ? any movement.

-Follow up on Move to Archive phase in Moovila, and final process to actually Archive – see if it was done.

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Wrapping up some action items, like the promos, Opollo Social Calendar draft sent over by Gemma, discussions with Jordan on deliverables over the next two weeks for Shartega. Documentation of projects discussion with Mark S. and setting my follow up with him for Oct 29th.

Action Items:

None

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Spent time today getting all activities from yesterday updates. Went through Wrike project and updates tasks and to-dos. Reporting and scheduling finished for this week and over next two weeks while out of town. Built out a list of items to review with Jordan today at our operations meeting during my absence.

Action Items:

None

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Met with Steven and Miles to discuss the outbound cold email campaign. We discussed advanced segmenting to increase the number of contacts available, creating a secondary version of the email sequence to A+B test, pulling a manual list of car dealerships in Chicago, and setting up the LinkedIn automation campaign.

Action Items:

Steven:

• Update personas in Apollo

• Create A+B test content

• Setup LinkedIn automation campaign

• Pull a list of car dealerships in Illinois

Completed by: Jordan Patterson

Notes:

Had the monthly stand up with Opollo. I don't like that there is no agenda shared. I don't like there is no KPIs, no reporting reviews, no action items from prior months or prior work, its just a free for all meeting. I will be working with Steven to clean this up.

That said he did discuss they are changing reporting engines. I did mention I wanted the new reporting guy on the call Miles – he and Jordan need to get to know each other – and go through his reporting as well as SemRush reporting that we generate. Steven brought up that they use SemRush as well, and my answer to that is good, then you should be seeing what we are seeing, to ensure SEO and SEM are being consistently addressed.

We discussed promotion a bit. Content marketing vs. promotional marketing. I drove home some of the marketing strategy needs as it relates to internal and external assessment, competitive advantages, and switching costs. That triggered Steven to want to make a whole campaign on Switching. Maybe/Maybe not-i'll hear it out. I think it probably needs to combo competitive advantage, durability, switching, and pain.

I will address this more this month with him.

Gemma made it out like she sent me a bunch of promotion ideas, and I did correct her that she just cleaned up the language of the one I sent her. I want more out of this group as it relates to things that worked well with other MSPs. I feel like they avoid this, which concerns me that they really haven't had the successes you would think they have.

From a bite-sized pieces we addressed that we have caught up prior lagging approvals, and that we are giving them the opportunity to execute now.

I expressed that the lack of ICPs is a problem, Jordan is scheduled for tomorrow. I want to get sample data for these ICPs to ensure we have the right outreach folks, and once we do, we need to maximize the 5200 credits we are paying for monthly to start filling our database with leads.

Drove home ROI ROI ROI. We need qualified leads.

With me being out of town for my trip, I need to hand off some things to Jordan to ensure they get handled in my absence.

Action Items:

-Follow up with Steven on the campaigns

-Follow up with Nic on the promotion

-Hand off to Jordan

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Attended WIP meeting with Nic, Opollo marketing team, and George. We discussed active work in progress, ensured there were no approvals needed, and setting up Nic as the POC for the outbound email campaigns. The Opollo marketing team has been given approval to send newsletter, and to start warming up Nic's outbound email account.

Action Items:

None

Completed by: Jordan Patterson

Notes:

Met with Mark S. today and went through the entire projects list again for full updates.

Hiller network refresh needs to be done by Nov 6 (not Oct 6) as there is a 30 day grace for Meraki. They have been quoted Unify (which I got that information from Chris).

Autobarn LTD is dropping a bunch of new projects, for all 3 sites. Some of these are not in Moovila yet, Mark is wanting to build out more stuff in Autotask and have the integration to Moovila move / pull these things together. I am not sure that is the right way to approach this. For now as he is getting his arms wrapped around being all Autotask now, and the fact there is no Moovila integration YET, until there is this doesn't work anyways.

My thinking is that we should start with a project template in Moovila and then it will generate the major and minor milestones/project tasks that are outlined in the project template when applied to a new project and finalized for the client. It is then that Moovila will generate tickets in Autotask (either as a large dump, or in real time as things are needing to be done as we progress through the project). I don't think we want to originate in Autotask. Anyhow, for now this is fine as they are not integrated and he is still getting his arms wrapped around a great deal of change.

ATI has a client project as well coming in to be done by end of year.

I implicitly brought up Ettleson's projects that have been in Queue with no start date. I "nudged" Mark by saying ok, so we have these two Ettleson projects. They are approved. We told them Q3/Q4. Well we are here now and Dan Wolf, and other projects are very active right now. I asked Mark "What is the plan? Are we going to wait til they start to blow us up? or are we going to get ahead of that?" – he sat there for a second – then said "Well we should probably get ahead of it." – I then agreed and noted to him "It would probably be better if it looked like we were driving the train. Once they speak up they are going to make it out like if they hadn't said anything we wouldn't be responding". He agreed. I saw the thoughts going through him. I then nudged again and said "So what is the first steps we need to take on these two projects?" and he said "we need a planning session with Derrick, and probably someone from each dealership" – I asked how long of a planning meeting is that and he responded an hour or so. Might need a follow up. I said that was great. When do you want to do it. He said Thursdays are usually best. I asked ok, when do you want to reach out and ask them for the planning meeting. He said "Oh I can do it right after this." – so I hope he did. I'll find out Thursday.

I also repeated a few times that when we do these initial reach outs and communication we can say to the client "We need to go through a few planning meetings, so we can clarify and understand everything, set expectations, etc. and that once we do that we should be able to start building out a starting time/date window. " — I explained to Mark, this way this gives us some initial umph to the project, and it also lets us control start dates. Using the word Window gives flexibility if a project that is suppose to be wrapped isn't quite wrapped yet. My suggestion was once we do the planning meetings at the end of the final one, you can say something like "We think we can get this kicked off after Jan 15th, probably before the 25th.".

I queried if we are going to keep the Ettleson projects as 2 separate projects even though we are going to do them in unison. He said yes, and that moovila allows dependencies between projects and he would rather do it that way. I say lets see how that goes. I think it over complicates, but it might be cleaner.

Audi UPS replacements need to be sorted, some are net new. Some are true replacements. There is some "new" quoting system dynamics going on here as well.

Rifast – Wanson has last pushouts of agents to be installed, verifying servers as well. I'll follow up on this Thursday w/ Mark to see that it is ready to be archived.

That said we reviewed all the other projects ready to be archived. I want to still get them "moved" to a separate section in Moovila to hang out a bit before making disappear. Another Thursday discussion point.

Set up Zoom for Thursday at 2pm

Action Items:

-Followup with Mark to see if he got Ettleson's project planning sessions scheduled

-Follow up on Rifast

-Follow up on Audi UPS proposals

-Follow up on Move to Archive phase in Moovila, and final process to actually Archive.

-Send iCal for Thursday 2pm Zoom

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Spent an hour or so with Chris on a 1-1. I wanted to get his take on Brett leaving. His stance on Sales (which he doesn't want to participate in new business sales – although I am sure if we need him he will show up). He feels it is good Nic is doing sales, I wouldn't disagree. I asked about Impact Leads and he said he wasn't doing anything with them, that Nic is. Which is good to know. I need to add Impact to my 1-1 w/ Nic going forward.

Chris feels we need a communications person. I don't disagree with that, I have said that in the past. I personally used a communications person as both communications and channel management with a great deal of success. If we were to get a communications person we would need to be very specific on that role and it's responsibilities and to ensure it stays on the rails.

We discussed promotion ideas. I liked an idea he had which is the "Price Match Guarantee" and certainly with caveats it could be a powerful selling tool.

We went through some personal and health things with him that he feels has helped tremendously with his state of mind and ability to achieve his goals. He has finally gotten to a point where he isn't as worried about the things that he can't change in the company (specifically personnel and personnel perceived attitudes). So he is coping with that better.

We went through his new role. His new TAM/employee. He is happy to manage someone again. I hear him speak of the new TAM like he did when he was managing Brian.

It was good of him to note that the vCIO role has allowed us to upsell projects that were much needed to our clients. That he feels it helps also with retention and client communication. He also noted that as these projects complete, the short term projects will lessen significantly, which will change how easy/hard it is to achieve any revenue goals as it relates to that. I reminded him that it is good to note that, but also we get this sales engine running well, all the new clients we onboard will have a slew of project work that needs to be determined and sold.

Setup a follow up meeting for him Nov. 4 @ 2pm.

Action Items:

-Setup a follow up meeting for him Nov. 4 @ 2pm.

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Went through Apollo to check for requested updates to personas and sequences. No updates have been made at this time. Scheduled meeting with Steven for Tuesday 10/15 to discuss project status and updates to the personas requested.

Action Items:

None

Completed by: Jordan Patterson

Notes:

• Setup monthly automated SEO report to be sent to Nic Connor

• The report includes all backlink and analytics data from organic, paid, and social traffic.

Action Items:

None

Completed by: Jordan Patterson

Notes:

Spent the morning building out project status Wrike so I can review the status, and priorities, and time windows for open active projects in Moovila. Spent some time working inside Moovila to become more familiar with the product. Mark S. hemmed and hawed about having a "quick status" for projects where we could quickly review their status without digging into each one from a management standpoint. For now I built this out in Wrike.

Items to note to be discussed today with Mark S.

-Standardization of Account or Company, some are just the company "The Exchange", "Dan Wolfe", etc. some are by dealership type, such as "Ettleson Hyundai", "Ettleson Cadillac-Buick-GMC", some are by location, "The Autobarn LTD Evanston".

-Closed or Recently Closed Projects – they simply disappear – yes we likely can do another filter for them – what we might want is a "trial close" or something like this where they sit closed for 2 weeks or something like that, so we can see they are closed, confirming they are closed, making sure no new things pop up, and then move them during the meeting to fully closed. We could maybe have an automation (do they have that?) – but I'd think it would be better during the meeting to say ok, lets close it. And we do it together. If a tech or Mark closes a project completely without it being a discussion point, it can get forgotten, or overlooked for any in-house things we want to address, praise or punishment, etc.

Action Items:

Review above bullets with Mark S. among other items

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Called Chris to discuss setting up a 1-1 with me, got that scheduled for this coming Monday. Also needed to discuss what was going on with Hillard AP, there is a project related to infrastructure for Hillard, and the Meraki's were going out of service on the 4th (my notes said 4th, Chris affirmed but said it was on the 6th). He said they went with Unify instead of Meraki.

Action Items:

Send Chris 1-1 iCal invite.

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Discussed with Nic on how Mark S was adapting to working with me. Nic reflected at first there was a little push back to Ricky on it. However, Nic feels the meetings have been moving Mark to adopting more.

Mark was happy apparently with the discussion on Dan Wolf Sunday project work and my suggestion of just doing cable management. Now it will be cable management, monitors, and PC staging. Which I agreed was good. Mark S. liked that part of the discussion.

I went through Wrike quickly with Nic and the need for a single text field for quick status updates, expressed that Mark S. wasn't too keen on that. In the interim I have done it in my own PM system so I can quickly run through Project updates with him.

We discussed also the fact that Zack from The Exchange context switched Sam who was there for another project this week to doing some Meraki AP installs that Zack had acquired from outside Shartega and was redirecting Sam to do that instead. We went through if setup fees were charged, and Nic said they have, and went through that it is still a project, not just professional services board, and it should be on the projects list. We went through a few scenarios on that. As the major project templates and adoption to Moovila and integration to Autotask continues and is more adopted, I think we then could shift and make a push for that part to be brought in.

I also requested I am involved in creating Autotask automation flows. Nic said he was ok with it. I do need to get ahead of that. Of course I am also backed up to my upcoming vacation. So I'll likely be in arrears for the week of the 28th once I am back, but I need to run with that that week.

We unfortunately didn't get deep into Opollo. We discussed briefly that we need a sales/BD/promotion. I challenge Nic to consider/think of some, and make them BOLD. My suggestion was 2 free months of service, no contract or commitment. With some ** requirements, such as must be 15 end points or more, limited availability to this promotion, etc.

Action Items:

-Request to be on Flows meetings

-Get a promotion out of Nic next week

-Make sure there is a task somewhere to validate Setup fees with Ricky on Client Acquired Gear

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Met with Mark S. to review current projects. Went through the status of all open projects (with my new Wrike build out). Reviewed some of the new things

I discussed Standardizing accounts and company names. Some of the auto groups company names are just the group name. Some are name+car type (i.e. Ettleson Hyundai) vs. some are name+location (i.e. The Autobarn, LTD Evanston). — Mark said these were the legal entities/contract names.

Discussed closed projects – keeping them from disappearing from the project list – until we all discuss doing that. He said they would stay on there until we "Move to Archive" – my thoughts were that they should move to a new Phase that are "ready to be closed" or "ready to archive" or something like that then we review them one or more times and then verbally agree to archive them out.

I wanted to ask him to send me some copies of communication emails, but when I asked him if he reached out to Dolan like I requested, he said no, I stayed the thought until our next visit(s).

I asked him if he had gone through Moovila automations, and since my account was a member account and not an admin I could not see how automations were designed or built in Moovila, he shifted to saying that all Automations would be done via Autotask and that flows were currently being designed. I hinted that I'd like to be part of the flow discussions, and marked this as something to discuss with Nic. He expects client communication automations as it relates to projects to come from tickets and automations inside of Autotask, not Moovila. That may be right, I can't form an opinion on that yet.

We discussed the outcome of Sunday's using cable management, and that it was a welcomed idea. Expanded to also unboxing of monitors and setup (they do have a VGA input). We went through the logistics of that, and possibly staging the new PC under/by the desk or in a space nearby to the install area (i.e. a quad of cubes, possibly near the quad). We also discussed context switching and making sure folks stick to tasks repeatedly until there is no more to do, then switch to a new task repeatedly, etc. referenced the confetti workshop I had everyone do.

We went through tasks vs. steps in Moovila. If all the "steps" are checked in a project task, it does not automatically move the % completed, or any checked, a portion of % completed. I find this odd, but it maybe a flow that needs to be enabled. I didn't bring it up, just taking note of it.

I asked if Autotask uses Parent Child relationships or not, such we could have a ticket "Deliver 150 new PCs", and then there are 10-or 20 child tasks for delivering them.

We went through all the projects, I took note that the Hillard had Sam onsite for PC deployment, and Zack context switched him to do some Meraki AP installs they had bought on their own. Need to review this with Nic.

Action Items:

-Discuss with Nic about Sam context switching

-Discuss w/ Nic client based purchases not in as projects

-Discuss w/ Nic re: Autotask flows and being a part of that (although my trip out of town may hinder that a little.)

-Need to see if I can get Admin access to Moovila so I can see what automations are in there – probably need Nic for that too. Since Mark didn't catch that first round, I'll be more direct Monday

-Setup iCal for Monday agreed followup at 1:30.

-Get some copies of recent communication emails from Mark to to client project contacts

Completed by: George Fassett

Notes:

Created automatic activity reporting for Shartega.

• System will send Nic Connor an email every Monday with a generated activity report for the previous week.

Action Items:

None

Completed by: Jordan Patterson